Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 5/16/22 Ted Snider: Did the CIA Oust Imran Khan?

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

Scott is joined by Ted Snider to discuss the removal of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan’s government announced in June of 2021 that Pakistan would no longer host any American military bases. Then, earlier this year, Khan was forced out by a vote of no confidence. He immediately turned around and blamed the United States, claiming his removal was a U.S. orchestrated coup. His claims garnered popularity in Pakistan. Snider decided to look into Khan’s theories. He shares what he’s found with Scott.    Discussed on the show: “Why Imran Khan’s coup theory is so popular in Pakistan” (Responsible Statecraft) Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in U.S. foreign policy and history. He is a regular writer for Truthout, MondoWeiss and antiwar.com. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, y'all, welcome to the Scott Horton Show. I'm the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of anti-war.com, author of the book, Fool's Aaron, Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and The Brand New, Enough Already, Time to End the War on Terrorism. And I've recorded more than 5,500 interviews since 2004. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scothorton dot for you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com slash scott horton's show you guys i got ted snider back on the line he writes for us regularly at antiwar dot com but this one is for responsible statecraft why imran kahn's coup theory is so popular in pakistan

and with huge apologies to my audience for the delay in covering this topic. I know I've been dying to, and thank goodness Ted finally wrote about it for us. Welcome back to the show. Ted, how are you doing, sir? I'm doing well, Scott. Thank you so much for having me back on the show. Happy to have here. So it was not exactly a military coup d'etat, at least on the face of it. It was a parliamentary, no confidence vote, got rid of Imran Khan, the very independent-minded, former soccer star, turned Prime Minister of Pakistan. Now, I know as well as you know, he wasn't never supposed to be the prime minister of Pakistan

if Langley and D.C. got their way, but it happened anyway. Now the question is whether Langley and D.C. were behind his overthrow. What do you say? It was so interesting, Scott. And, you know, like you're saying in your sort of introduction, you know, it looks like one, right? It has all the hallmarks of, you know, Randor, what I've been calling the silent coups, the coups that are non-confidence votes or use democracy or, you know, the parliament to get rid of a leader that doesn't, it doesn't involve like gunboats and tanks. It looks like democracy, but it's really a coup. And it had all the hallmarks of it. And we can go through something later if you want, but everything

looked like it. And as I approach the story, as somebody who writes about coups, I was approaching the stories like this looks like another U.S. coup. But as I went on researching it and as I talked about people who are more expert on Pakistan than I am, because I write a lot about coups, but I'm not a Pakistan expert. And as I started talking to people, they were all saying, no, that there's no evidence. This was a coup. So, like, the original title for my article was, was Pakistan coup were convenient, because it's certainly convenient, like you said, nobody wanted him in the CIA. But I think, I think looking at the evidence right now, you have to say that, that there were reasons why I want a coup.

It looks like a coup. It went down like a coup, but it's not a coup. It wasn't a coup. So right now it just looks like something that's really convenient for the states. But I don't think at this point you can say it was a coup. Well, you know, when Mushire sees power in 98, I remember, and they had a parliamentary system at the time. and General Moose Sheriff just simply overthrew it. And Madeline Albright said,

eh, well, yes, this is concerning in sort of the most mild fashion. And then that raised the question then, was America behind the coup? Or they were just relieved to know that a general that they can count on is in charge now, because they clearly were not objecting that strenuously.

But it is true, right, that the CIA can only control so much. They're not behind. every you know faction fight anywhere um although i think it would be a fair question wouldn't it ted that to ask would the people in charge of getting rid of him now have done so without calling the americans first and so getting some help and some cooperation and some anything or not so you raised you raise actually two really important interesting questions there One is the CIA's past in Pakistan, and, you know, one of the reasons this is one of the reasons Kahn's accusations have been so convincing to Pakistanis is that, first of all, you know, this incredible history of U.S. coups, and we can talk about more of the reason why it's believable too, but the one you brought up is important.

You know, when the, when the beautiful government was overthrown by Zia, by the military general and strongman in 77, you know, there's a little. A lot of people that think that that was a U.S. coup. It's interesting when you survey some of the world's best books on U.S. coups, though, there's never a chapter on that one, right? Like, was it a coup? Wasn't it a coup? I don't know. Some people in Pakistan, what we do know is that the CIA liked Zia.

We know that they approved of them. We know that the CIA director at the time, William Casey, when he met with them, came back saying he was very impressed. And we do know that... Whether it was a coup or not, the U.S. didn't oppose it. They only recognized Zia. They supported him in very controversial ways because they needed his help in Afghanistan. And they knew two things about Zia.

They knew that he was interested in bringing him sort of more radical Islam. And more importantly, he was pursuing a nuclear bomb. And the CIA knew both of these things. But because they wanted to work with Zia and cooperate with them, they turned a blind eye to that. This makes it very easy for people in Pakistan to believe that there's a coup now because they, or at least some of them, believe there was a coup before. As for your second question, could they do this, you know, without the U.S.? I ran into controversy all over on this because what's very clear that happened in Pakistan is that Imran Khan lost the support of the military. Okay, there's no question that, you know, he got in with the support of the military and he lost the support of the military.

Now, what exactly happened? So he loses the support of the military. The military, the wars that were out there where he eases their grip on the opposition parties. They'd held them in check. The military eased their grip on the opposition parties. And that made it, that at least opened the door to the non-confidence vote. Some people said that the military let it be no one that they supported the non-confidence vote. Some more expert people more cautiously said that they opened the door for the military vote.

And then the question that I asked a lot of people comes up. So where exactly is the Pakistani military aligned in this? So Stephen Kinser, who's a very good author on the CIA, on an American coups, he actually in an article of his, and I spoke to him after, and he called them the pro-American military. So that paints that picture again that makes it believable, right? A pro-American military supports the non-confidence vote to get con out of there. Others wouldn't use the word pro-American, though. one person I spoke to who's probably the biggest

Pakistan X word I spoke to he said it's not fair to characterize the Pakistani military as pro-American he called them opportunistic that they'll kind of side on the side that's convenient at the time which this time might have been American because another person who knows a lot about what's going on in Pakistan

said that the Pakistani military was anxious to kind of re-establishment its relations with the U.S. So the non-confidence vote happens, at least in part because Khan lost the support of the military. The extent towards the extent to which the military was either pro-American, just opportunistic or trying to reestablish relations America, I didn't get a consistent answer on that. Okay, so I don't think you can say that the U.S. worked through the Pakistani military to remove Khan. But I think you can say that Khan lost the support of a military who at least removed the constraints on the opposition and made a non-confidence vote possible.

You know, is that a coup? Yeah. You know, Chomsky says if that's a coup, then America's hatching coups every day. Yeah, I mean, there's no need to define it too broadly. I mean, look, in 2007, there were a bunch of times. people thought the Americans killed Benazir Bhutto, but it was the CIA was trying to put her in power, and it was the Tariqi Taliban or somebody close to them who killed her. People just assume that, you know, the CIA does everything. That was a big theory at the time

was she meant to say Daniel Pearl in an interview and said Osama bin Laden. And so people said, aha, she knew the truth about bin Laden, so they killed her. And it was like, nah, because if you actually know what's going on here, the CIA's in the middle of trying to put her back into power is what's going on. They weren't the ones who killed her. Somebody killed her because of that is what really happened, you know. Yeah. And again, Scott, we're saying is important because if you divide the questions, if you separate

the question of was it a coup to why is the belief in Pakistan, at least among some groups strong that it's a coup? And, you know, part of the answer is what you're saying is that, you know, the CIA's been involved in so many coups, including possibly a Pakistani coup, that. that they don't find it hard to believe. And then you add into the picture that the state... I mean, by the way, just to be clear, at the time, they weren't supporting her in a coup.

They were supporting her in an election, but still, I mean, they're meddling. You see how Americans take kindly to that when it's not even true. I mean, imagine if it was as true as that was for them, how obvious it was for them at that time with her. Yes, and I was referring to Zia more. Sure, I just want to make sure that I was clear what I was saying. And there were reasons gone. I don't know what order you want to go into things, but, you know, there were reasons again that make it believable because there were there were reasons to think

that the states wouldn't want zia in power and certainly there'll be some in Washington who find it much easier to work with pakistan that he's now that he's not in power and if you want we can go through some of those reasons that again makes it believable as a coup because there's you know there's three or four reasons why the motivation would be there for a coup and then you add you know several reasons why there's the appearance of a coup and yeah and And let's do that. Let's talk about his history here because, as I said in the intro here, he's a soccer star and that matters. The point being that this is not a career politician. This is a guy who is an outsider, but he's famous enough to pull it off in that Trumpian kind of way.

And it's clear, because he ran for office over and over. And it was clear back then. I forget all the reasons why I knew this. But it was clear back then the Americans really did not want him to win ever. And he finally did. And then didn't he announce essentially, an anti-American foreign policy right away. And I mean that in the best sense. Don't get me wrong. Yeah. So, Scott, you get two things happening. So you said the Americans didn't weren't happen when and got in. So one thing that, that this gets played down sometimes because people talk with as being sort of normal, sort of diplomatic snubbing. And maybe it is. But in Pakistan, they took it very seriously that Joe Biden never called Imran Khan. So, so what does that mean, right? Is, is Biden

not happy with him as president, 16 months into office for Biden, he never once phoned Imran Khan, didn't seem to want to talk about him. Secondly, and I'm quoting the New York Times right now, not exactly, you know, alternative media. You know, the New York Times said that Khan oversaw what they called the new era of Pakistan's foreign policy, and they described that as a foreign policy that was distancing from the United States. So you get that. this snubbing of Kahn, you get Kahn bringing in a foreign policy that's independent of the U.S. Well, and to be clear here, he was saying, no, you can't have bases to fly drones to kill Afghans from Pakistan, which was a big deal. Right. So later, partway into his term, you get, you know,

the U.S. who's used Pakistani soil as a launching operation for drones and all kinds of action into Afghanistan. And then the wording's very interesting, Scott. And this is like, this is the whole of my article, because it just makes for a good article, right? What you get is you get the Pakistani foreign minister standing up in the Pakistani Senate and saying that as long as Imran Khan is prime minister of India, there'll be no American, there'll be no use of American basis in Pakistani soil. And then, and then quickly later, he's no longer, right? So you get, as long as he's prime minister, there'll be no U.S. bases, then he's not prime minister. So, So what Kahn said was that he said he would absolutely not allow the CIA or American special forces, he said, to ever again use Pakistan as a base.

He said there's no waiver going to allow any basis, any sort of action from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan. Absolutely not. So it's an independent foreign policy, and he's now saying you're not staging actions from Pakistan. Absolutely not. And then you get the added problem. So the states needs Pakistan, right? They need for intelligence operations. They need it for counterterrorism operations.

They need for launching, you know, operations to Afghanistan. But you've also got an Afghanistan who's saying, you know, that any question of sort of peace in Afghanistan is largely in Pakistani hands. And here's, you know, as I say in my article, Pakistani hands, clearly not shaking American hands. And Blinken stands up, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken stands up in Congress. and says that Pakistan has many interests and some of them are conflict with ours, right? So right before the non-confidence vote,

you get a prime minister of the states has never phoned, who's setting up an independent policy, who says, as long as I'm prime minister, you're never going to have bases in my country, and you've got Blinken saying that his interests aren't consistent with ours, and then throw this into Scott,

because in some ways this is the biggest, you know, in the current context of the world is that the United States wants to form, you know, a global block condemning Russia and isolating China and putting enormous pressure on countries to do that. And Pakistan won't do that. Pakistan's a very close ally of China. And if anything is moving closer and closer to Russia, they're members of the Shanghai Cooperation organization, which is a Russian-Chinese-led organization specifically intended to counterbalance U.S. hegemony. And so Khan is not only moving closer to China and Russia. He's in Russia

on the eve of the invasion. The states is asking him to cancel his meeting with Putin. He defies the states and won't cancel his meeting with Putin. He goes, he sends his ambassador to the United Nations when the vote comes up first to condemn Russia. and Pakistan abstains. Then there's a second vote to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council and Pakistan abstains. So the West sends a mission of 22 diplomats to pressure Kahn to condemn Russia. And Kahn just smacks back at them and says, who do you think I am? Your slavery thing I can do what you do.

I actually saw in some places, too, that the state department after that called Pakistan to pressure them on the U.S. at UN vote, and Pakistan defied them. So aside from the no basis for Afghanistan and an independent foreign policy, you've got Pakistan in this poll, in this world, whether it's going to be a U.S. world, you know, U.S., that unipolar world or, you know, a multipolar world, you know, a multipolar world, you've got Pakistan refusing to line up solidly in the American side and voting in support of, you know, China and Russia. And so you've got all this coming up. This doesn't prove it's a coup, right? But these are all the reasons why a coup could look convenient. And then you throw in that there

were some things Pakistan claimed that looked like a coup. And you get this sort of, despite the fact that there's no evidence of a coup, you get this very believable picture that there's been a coup. Give me just a minute here. Listen, I don't know about you guys, but part of running the Libertarian Institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors. And who wants to stand in line all day at the post office, but Stamps.com? Sorry, but their website is a total disaster. I couldn't spend another minute on it, but I don't have to either, because there's easyship.com. Easyship.com is like stamps.com, but their website isn't terrible. Go to Scotthorton.org slash easy ship. Hey, y'all, Scott here. You know the Libertarian Institute

has published a few great books. Mine, fools errand, enough already, and the great Ron Paul, two by our executive editor Sheldon Richmond, coming to Palestine and what social animals owe to each other. And of course, no quarter, the ravings of William Norman Grigg, our late great co-founder and managing editor at the Institute. Coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarious handbook, edited by Keith Knight, a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons, one more collection of essays by Will Grigg, and two new books about Syria, by the great William Van Wagonen and Brad Hoff and his co-author Zachary

Wingard. That's Libertarian Institute org slash books. Yeah, you know, it just occurred to me while we're talking here. I used to know this Pakistani general. Was it Shalkat Khadir, right, that used to write for counterpunch? I interviewed him

before. Yeah. And he had the dirty, hated General Keani, I think. It was always, you know, talking smack about Keani's relationship with America and stuff. I wonder if I could get back a hold of him. Yeah. But yeah, look,

it's not like Americans had any reason to believe that Russia would have meddled in our election, but what if they actually had meddled in our country? Really? Numerous times in the past. You know? And then you had some crazy impeachment type event

go on, you know, like this. You'd see why, hell. I mean, you already have color-coded type revolutions in America. It seems like anyway. But, I mean, just imagine how upset Americans would be, how nationalistic we would get. I know you're a Canadian. But imagine how crazy the Americans would get, Ted. If this was really happening to us, dude, we would freak.

You guys would be afraid of what we would do up there on the other side of the border, safe, you know, in the woods freezing up there wherever you're eating maple syrup. And Scott, that's actually the next piece of the picture. Because I've been careful so far, you know, not to say that the states was meddling, but just that there were reasons that that would make it so that they wouldn't be unhappy with somebody different but not meddling. But then what happens is when Kahn is gone is he explicitly accuses the states of meddling. And he makes two accusations, really. The first is he says that the U.S. consulate was meeting with members of his party. but just with the members of his party who defected before the non-confidence vote.

So he claims that the U.S. Consul is meeting with members of the party shortly before they peel away and switch and vote against Khan. He also claims that the American Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Donald Liu, he claims that Lou communicated through official channels that the Biden administration would impose dire consequences if the non-confidence vote didn't pass. I have no idea if this is true. You know, when I've asked Pakistani experts, they've said there's not only no evidence that the U.S. behind this, but they've said there's not even circumstantial evidence. But this is what Kahn throws out there. And he throws it out there against a backdrop of all the reasons why the states would want to get rid of them

with a whole history of knowing the states does get rid of governments. And then he throws in these two claims that the states was meddling. And the other thing I point out in my article, too, Scott, that doesn't hurt. And again, I'm not arguing there's a coup. I'm actually arguing there wasn't a coup, but I'm arguing that it could look a lot like a coup. And the other thing that doesn't help is that the states is going around doing this. I pointed out earlier in our talk that the really big thing the states had against Pakistan right now

is that they wouldn't align against Russia. And then you get the head of the, I don't know, he's fair to call it the head, But the Belarusian opposition, Tickenovskaya, I don't know if I'm saying her name right, Ticken of Skaya meets with Blinken and Washington. And of course, you know, Belarus is siding with Russia. And Washington promises her full support for opposition movement. They even promise her that they'll provide equipment and technology to help journalists and activists. So as Khan, who won't side with the states against Russia, or at least remaining neutral,

but won't line up clearly in the American camp is removed from power by the opposition. You see America quite vocally telling the opposition in other countries that won't line up with America that we will help you, you know, to become the next government in your country. And so all of this just looks really ugly. And, you know, when you've got this whole history of looking this ugly and you do something in a situation that looks like you'd want to do something ugly again, And it's very easy to believe that America did something ugly. And I think that's why this whole picture is so persuasive in parts of Pakistan,

where some of cons supporters feel like they got blindsided by what in the end was a non-confidence vote based on economic performance. Like that's not that common a reason to actually get rid of a government. And so you get these supporters feeling blindsided, still commanding enormous. popularity in Pakistan, knowing that America didn't like him being the leader, knowing there's all these reasons they might want to get rid of him, and then looking at, you know, kind of all these things that appear like they got rid of him, and it's very easy to believe that they got rid of him, except, and I'm using Stephen Kinzer's words this time, except that this time, there's just, there's no smoking gun. It's not, it's not at all clear that even though this

has looked at so much like what the CIA does, there's no evidence that this time, it's something that the CIA did. It might have just been something very fortuitous for America and they maybe didn't have to do it this time. Who knows it will find out. I mean, you know, I had this conversation with Stephen Waltz a couple weeks ago where we're talking about the coup of 2014. And he's like, I don't think he's disputing it was a coup, but he was just saying it wasn't the Americans who did. It was essentially an indigenous coup that, yeah, of course, the Americans then got involved in helping picking the winners and all these other things. And I'm like, Eh, I don't know.

You know, I guess really, in every one of these coups, especially in the color-coded revolutions, which is coups disguised as revolutions, right? Of course, there are lots of local actors involved. Hell, when Henry Kissinger had a yende overthrown in Chile, he made a phone call, and it was some military guys that did it, right? Killed their own commander, or maybe it was some different dogs, I don't know, kill the commander of the military and then kidnap the yende, whatever.

Name a coup, right? Of course, there's local people involved in it, and it's a gray area as far as just how much CIA involvement. Same thing for Iran in 53, right? I wasn't completely manufactured. There was plenty of discontent with Mossadegh. It's just a CIA built on that and funded those guys and had them do protests and all of the things that they did, you know? You know, Scott, since the CIA overtook the coup portfew. from from from the military um one of not necessarily the most successful ways in fact that

maybe one of the least successful ways but but one of the ways they've tried to do coos is all is often through fostering an indigenous movement because they're not going in with planes and tanks and and gun boats right so so so the hand has to be unseen and and so you know to say it wasn't a coup because it was indigenous actors um look at a survey of you know u.s. coups and the last half century, they almost always involve working in some way through indigenous actors. 2014, I mean, the state was heavily involved in that coup. It was, I mean, I think it was pretty clearly at least a U.S. supported coup, you know,

and a coup that in many ways set the stage for what's going on now, and that Russia certainly saw as the beginning of attempts at regime change in Russia. So, you know, that's why this one's so confusing, because you often do see what looks like the military doing it, but the American hand is behind it. And this time you have a military that, if not pro-American, is at least opportunistically trying to improve its relations with America. But the thing is, that doesn't prove that every time it was America, I would argue 2000. 14 was a U.S. supported coup in Ukraine where the U.S. was heavily involved, not just in picking who comes next and recognizing who comes next, but in creating a condition that made things

impossible in Ukraine and then backing and supporting and pushing a coup, you know, in lots of ways. But just because when you get indigenous actors working, it's often the CIA behind it doesn't mean that it's always a CIA behind it. And what was so intriguing for Pakistan for me, because I'm not a Pakistan expert. I mean, what drew me to the story is that it looked so much like, you know, the new type of U.S. silent coup. Like, it really looked like one.

And when I started researching it, I was doing that, honestly, Scott, with, you know, the assumption I was going to be writing about another U.S. coup. Well, some guy on Twitter sent me all at Emron Kahn's PR guys contact info, and I sent him to my guy. So I'm going to try to get him on the show. No, see if he can prove any of those assertions. You say he didn't offer any proof for his claims about those meetings, right? No, so I'm told by people that there's not only no evidence, but, I mean, the word that Adam Weinstein from the Quincy Institute, who was very generous and spoke to me a lot, and he's kind of a Pakistan expert, and, you know, he said, he said, I've not only not seen any evidence.

He said, he said, I haven't even seen any circumstantial evidence that, you know, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, you know, that, that, that, that. claims were they're fascinating and there may have been there may have been you know some people have said there may have been letters saying that the u.s was not pleased with pakistan's independent policy but that's the kind of letter you're going to get from u.s embassies all the time right we're not pleased with your independent policy that that it was more than that hasn't been substantiated or proven and that's what that's what you know that i was surprised like i said I meant to write an article on a coup, and the more I read, and the more I talk to people more expert in Pakistan than I, the more they were telling me there's no smoking gun here, there's

no evidence of a coup, there's nothing. It has all the appearances of it. It might get the states exactly the results they wanted, but that doesn't prove this time was the state. I think this is the first time I've probably ever been on your show saying it wasn't the state. Yeah, the Fed's got to you, Ted. See, they even rhyme Ted and Fed. We, So who knows, like I said, who knows? We'll find out later. It's a totally intriguing picture of what happened, but there's no evidence that the U.S. was behind it,

not that I can find. And whenever I spoke to someone who was really expert on this, to my surprise, that's what I got every time. All right, well, listen, keep your eyes open and let us know. Write a new one for anti-war.com if there's any important device. elements but i will that's good no i appreciate your take and everybody check out ted um doing the work for us so we know what the hell is going on at the quincy institute responsible statecraft why imron kahn's coup theory is so popular in pakistan and of course check out his full archive

in the right hand column there at antiwar dot com as well thanks again ted thanks so much scott it's great thing on your show the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in LA. APSRadio.com, anti-war.com, scothorton.org, and libertarian institute.org.